Salaried employees padded their pay by taking hourly wagesSalaried employees took on second jobs, padded their pay by taking hourly wages

Sacramento  Hundreds of state government managers who were supposed to be working on salary also took lower-level jobs in the same class and facility, padding their pay with hourly wages, a series of state audits has confirmed.

The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the Department of State Hospitals, the Department of Social Services and the state pension system were among the most prolific agencies engaged in the improper practice, the reports showed.

Examples include:

• A psychiatric supervisor at the state prison system whose salary is $294,000 a year, who performed front-line psychiatric work for $113 an hour.

• A psychiatric supervisor at the state hospital system whose salary is $264,000 a year, whose extra front-line job paid $125 an hour.

• A data processing manager at the California Public Employee Retirement System who is paid $94,000 a year and did work as a technician for $37.30 an hour.

The Department of Human Resources found that 428 state employees should not have been allowed to hold the additional positions. CalHR issued a new policy in April stating that departments were no longer authorized to make any add-on appointments for managers and supervisors.

The audit did not break down by region, so it’s unknown how many of the state employees lived or worked in San Diego or Riverside counties.

Many of the employees in question were not high-dollar medical personnel. One manager in the Employment Development Department took a side job as a $19-an-hour state typist. A boss at the Department of Motor Vehicles doubled as a $12-an-hour custodian.

Investigators did not complete a detailed cost-benefit analysis to determine how much was spent on the side jobs, officials told U-T Watchdog.

“It would be virtually impossible to come up with just how much was spent,” said Pat McConahay, a spokeswoman for CalHR, which answered questions on behalf of all state agencies involved.

“It depends upon how many hours of work were performed and why the additional appointments were used. For example, there was work that needed to be done, whether a manager completed that work in an additional position and they should have used what is called arduous pay to compensate the manager; or they could have worked other employees at that classification overtime, which would have been at time and one-half; or they could have hired an employee, which most likely would have been at a lower salary level, but would have cost more in benefits.”

She added that the salaried employees who received extra pay will have to reimburse the state.

Human resources officials and the State Personnel Board reviewed 11 state departments’ personnel policies and practices relating to supervisors or managers who also held appointments in rank-and-file positions on Jan. 11. The officials looked specifically at use of additional positions that affected employees’ pay and reviewed the departments’ compliance with civil service laws.

The purpose was to determine whether they followed the rules. The practice of state workers moonlighting in hourly positions was first reported by The Sacramento Bee.

The investigation took nearly a dozen staffers to complete, officials said, with some working nights and weekends to meet a deadline timed around the release of Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget revisions earlier this month. McConahay could not say how much it cost, including in overtime, to complete the probes, which are broken down by the 11 individual departments and specify proposed corrective actions.

Reviews of the state prison’s agency found that 227 employees received additional appointments, of which 160 were supervisors holding at least one rank-and-file post. Nine were deemed to be proper.

For state hospitals, the audit found that 173 managers or supervisors held additional appointment in rank-and-file posts, 112 of which were deemed improper.